BOOK REVIEWS

The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America. By James Axtell. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. xii, 402. $7.95 paper.) Through most of the past decade, James Axtell has tirelessly preached the gospel of ethnohistory. For those students of early Pennsylvania and colonial North America who remain unconverted, this collection of ten essays-many of them previously unpublished-should be required reading. The contest of European and Indian cultures is a central-perhaps the central-phenomenon of early American history. That contest, Axtell persua- sively argues, can only be understood through the "common-law marriage of history and anthropology" (p. vii) known as ethnohistory. The opening essay, a reprint of a 1979 article, presents one of the best explanations to date of this hybrid discipline. Two discussions of scalping provide examples of Axtell's ethnohistorical approach. "The Unkindest Cut, or Who Invented Scalping?: A Case Study," repackages the argument of two recent articles by Axtell and William Sturtevant, putting to rest the myth that because Euro-Americans paid Indians scalp bounties they must also have taught them how to scalp. The new essay "Scalping: The Ethnohistory of a Moral Question" explores the devastat- ing ethical implications for both cultures of those scalp bounties. A major theme of many of the essays is provocatively introduced in "The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America," which analyzes European missionary efforts through an explication of a puzzling statement any researcher of the subject encounters repeatedly in the sources: that the first goal of missions must be "to 'reduce' the Indians from savagery to 'civility' " (pp. 45-46). Paradoxically, from the European perspective, one of the chief sins of male "savages" was that they behaved in ways only appropriate to gentlemen. To reduce Indians to civility meant to break them of such undeferen- tial habits and make them predictable, and hence controllable, European subjects-in short (though Axtell does not use these terms) to submit them to the discipline of a state-organized society. The implications of this insight go beyond the ethnohistory of colonial America and should be of interest to all students of the question of how states incorporate new subjects from nonstate cultures. The other side of the coin-Indian efforts to convert Europeans-is the focus of two previously published articles: "The Scholastic Philosophy of the Wilder- ness" and "The White Indians of Colonial America." The latter remains the standard account of its subject and should be of particular interest to readers of this journal for its discussion of eighteenth-century Pennsylvanians captured by Indians. "Last Rights: The Acculturation of Native Funerals in Colonial America" uses ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence to develop a point discussed more broadly in concluding parallel essays on "The English Colonial Impact on Indian Culture" and "The Indian Impact on English Colonial Culture": "the way people of one culture use or adapt another culture's artifacts (ideas, material objects, institutions, language) is more diagnostic ... than what they

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adopt" (pp. 245-246). The sobering realization emerges that when Indians and Europeans borrowed from each other, the result was often not more intercul- tural understanding but less. This anthology exhibits more internal logic and cohesion than most. Nevertheless, it shows faults common to the genre: various pieces written at different times for different purposes are sometimes redundant and occasionally contradictory. I must also mention that, in a new footnote to "The Scholastic Philosophy" (n. 66, p. 351), Axtell quotes statistics from a preliminary draft of my 1980 article with Alden Vaughan that were significantly revised for the published version he cites. On a more substantive level, some readers might object to Axtell's tendency to lump together evidence from a variety of English and French colonies, Indian cultures, and time periods, and to an occasional sweeping generalization. But those shortcomings stem from one of Axtell's great strengths: he fearlessly tackles the Big Questions and finds some intriguing answers. This gracefully written collection not only provides a compelling introduction to ethnohistory, it significantly expands our understanding of colonial America.

Institute of Early American History and Culture DANIEL K. RICHTER

The Papers of William Penn. Volume 2: 1680-1684. Edited by Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn, with Scott M. Wilds, Richard A. Ryerson, and Jean R. Soderlund, associated editors, and Ned C. Landsman, special editor. (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Pp. xix, 710. $45.00.) Volume I of The Papers of William Penn spanned thirty-five years of the Quaker leader's life. Volume II covers but five years, yet the editors correctly note that it was the "most creative" and "most productive" period of his career. Nor in their enthusiasm for their subject do they neglect to show that as early as 1684 it was evident that his success was less than complete. Of the 584 Penn documents known to exist for the years 1680 to 1684, 217 are reproduced here, over half of which have not previously been published. Unfortunately, there is almost no personal information in the midst of this otherwise full account, for time has left us without family correspondence, a journal, or letterbooks. The emphasis in this volume is, therefore, heavily political and economic. The Dunns set a very high standard in Volume I for their general introductions to documents as well as in their annotations, and that standard is maintained. Each of the ten sections of Volume II is succinctly but clearly introduced to the reader, and any question that might be raised about the documents is answered in the notes, which also contain bibliographic refer- ences. We look first at the negotiations for the charter for Pennsylvania. The richness of the documents will allow students to make relatively independent judgments as to why Penn was awarded a proprietary colony under such generous terms, although the question of the source of his power remains moot. Some of Penn's political allies are revealed in the second section, "Planning for Pennsylvania," in letters he received from Robert Barclay and others. His own hand now becomes more apparent. 328 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

The evolution of the Frame of Govenment can be observed in section three, where readers will probably want to test Gary Nash's assertion that Penn was pushed in a conservative direction by aristocrats represented by Thomas Rudyard. This section also contains Benjamin Furley's famous criticism of the Frame. The preparations for leaving for Pennsylvania are evidenced in financial transactions with the Free Society of Traders and Penn's steward, Philip Ford; real estate dealings involving the Indians and the colony of Maryland; and the proprietor's parting letter to his children. But we cannot follow Penn's relations with the Indians once he was in America, nor have we documentation for the creation and settlement of Chester, Bucks, and Philadelphia counties. We do, however, get a picture of his early handling of the Three Lower Counties and relations with neighboring colonies. To get the colony functioning Penn had to pay strict attention to laying out Philadelphia and organizing its county court system, to the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting as well as the Pennsylvana Assembly, to local regulations. Yet he was apparently enjoying his role as proprietor, settling in, writing that once his family arrived he was likely to be an "adopted American." The final sections of the Papers show us why this sentiment was not realized. First and foremost was his struggle with Lord Baltimore; the Quaker proprietor had to violate the Golden Rule if he was going to control the Three Lower Counties and the Susquchanna Valley. Indeed, it appeared that even Philadel- phia was threatened. The documents make clear why Penn felt he had to return to England. And there was conflict with neighboring New York as the proprietor attempted to expand his province's role in the fur trade, as well as friction with the colonists over a wide range of issues which was dispiriting to Penn after all his labors. The hasty and too often clumsy arrangements he made for the governing of Pennsylvania in his absence only added to his burdens. This is, of course, a story which has been told before. But never has it been so richly documented. Again we are in the debt of the Dunns and their associates at the Penn Papers for bringing us this historical treasure. San Francisco State University JOSEPH E. ILLICK

John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary. By Milton E. Flower. (Char- lottesvile: University Press of Virginia, 1983. Pp. xii, 338. $27.50.) When John Dickinson, the "penman of the Revolution," died in 1808 Tench Coxe tried to gather materials for a biography which he felt would certainly "reflect credit ... and honor upon our country." Dickinson, however, has remained perhaps the most neglected major figure in early American history: until the publication of this study by Milton E. Flower, there has been no twentieth-century full-length treatment of Dickinson's life. This neglect is particularly remarkable because of the existence of voluminous Dickinson manuscripts and a lengthy bibliography of published writings. Sticking close to this material, Flower follows Dickinson through the major episodes of his public life. He describes fully Dickinson's role in the royal government dispute in Pennsylvania, his preparation of important and influen- tial resistance documents from the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress to the BOOK REVIEWS 329

Declaration on the Cause and Necessities of Taking Up Arms, his drafting of the Articles of Confederation, his wartime military service and tenures as chief executive of Delaware and Pennsylvania, his involvement in the United States and Delaware constitutional conventions, and his service in various judicial and legislative offices in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Dickinson's marriage to Mary Norris, his family life, and his legal and business activities receive less attention but are not neglected. Flower's focus is Dickinson's ideas; by implication, Dickinson's behavior followed from these beliefs. Flower concludes that Dickinson's significance was "as an intellectual force in the nation's development," leading the "fight for liberty" (p. 303). Implicitly, Flower rejects the influential interpretation of Vernon Louis Parrington, who dismissed Dickinson as a "spokesman for the mercantile interests" who opposed British policies because "property and the rule of property were threatened." Flower, by contrast, is sympathetic to Dickinson. His role is pushed to the front in events where the value of Dickinson's contributions has been questioned, such as at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, and in the preparation of documents whose final form differed from the intent of Dickin- son's draft, such as the Articles of Confederation. In opposing independence, Dickinson is said to have displayed "moral courage" (p. 166). His subsequent military service in the summer of 1776 is emphasized as a counterweight to attacks on his patriotism. Flower seems to accept Dickinson's own explanation of innocence when charged with encouraging his brother not to accept Continen- tal money. Claims that Dickinson acted ineffectively as president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania in 1783 when he did not forcibly surpress mutinying soldiers is characterized as "undeserved" (p. 225). Instead "Dickin- son refused to be intimidated either by the soldiers or by the Congress" (p. 222). Dickinson's defense of states' rights in this incident, coming from a strong nationalist, is presented as an important contribution to the emergence of federalism. But Flower is not completely uncritical toward his subject. He acknowledges that Dickinson's exchanges with Joseph Galloway over royal government in 1764 were "petty diatribes" that "gained him no mark of distinction" (p. 47). And while ascribing Dickinson's hesitancy over independence to an accurate perception of threatening divisions within Pennsylvania and among the colonies, Flower concludes that Dickinson was mistaken in not realizing that "by the spring of 1776 the time for passive means of protest had ended" (p. 147). While comprehensive regarding the events of Dickinson's life, this biography leaves aspects of its subject unclear. Flower alludes to possible social bases for politics in Pennsylvania in the years approaching the Revolution, but neglects this subject during the 1780s. No mention is made of the scholarship that has argued whether the division between Republicans and Constitutionalists was economic or ethnic and religious. Hence, Flower does not consider whether Dickinson's wealth or Quaker associations, which he briefly discusses, played any role, along with ideas, in making Dickinson a Republican. Even regarding ideas, Flower is incomplete. Dickinson's thought is described, but not analyzed closely. For instance, was the epistemological basis of Dickinson's thought legal and historical "experience," as H. Trevor Colbourn has argued, or "natural rights," as David Jacobson has suggested? Flower does not use the work of 330 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Gordon Wood, Lance Banning, and Richard Buel regarding ideological patterns following the Revolution to try to explain why Dickinson followed aspects of republican thought that led to the camp of Thomas Jefferson rather than aspects that would have led to John Adams. How did Dickinson come to be not only a political ally but a close personal friend of George Logan and Tench Coxe? Opportunism may explain such behavior in Dickinson's close friend Thomas McKean, but for someone who took ideas seriously, like Dickinson, part of the explanation could lie in the complex patterns of change and continuity that characterized republican thought under the federal constitution. When future students examine such intriguing aspects of Dickinson's life, they will have a solid point of departure, Milton Flower's lucid, scholarly, and comprehensive biography.

University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire ROBERT J. GOUGH

Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Original Thirteen States, 1776-1789. By Robert J. Dinkin. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982. Pp. x, 184. $27.50.) Mr. Dinkin, relying on secondary studies of each of the thirteen original states and supplementing and enriching these with his own primary research, describes popular participation in the choice of state-level office holders between 1776 and 1790. Those familiar with the literature on Pennsylvania in this period will find few surprises but will benefit from Mr. Dinkin's collection and analysis of relevant information from disparate and sometimes obscure sources. Furthermore, presentation of parallel descriptions of each of the other twelve states helps put voting in Pennsylvania into perspective. Dinkin's book concentrates on describing the voting process itself rather than analyzing the substance of electoral behavior. After an introductory overview of politics which reflects the influence of Jackson Turner Main, Dinkin offers detailed state-by-state descriptions of seven distinct aspects of voting, and some tentative generalizations about the interstate tendencies he sees in each category. The electorate expanded in most areas and no more so than in Pennsylvania where approximately 90 percent of adult white males could vote by the end of the period. Candidates increasingly came from among the new men with less wealth and status. The nomination process changed from informal individual or small group activity to legislative caucuses and statewide nominating conven- tions, a process carried further in Pennsylvania than in most states, and exemplified in the Anti-federalists' Harrisburg convention and the Federalists' Lancaster convention in 1788. Electioneering also changed. Disinterested, detached, isolated gentlemen candidates standing for election gave way to partisan office seekers vigorously running with the support of extra-local organizations developing and implementing new techniques to mobilize, influence, and turn out the vote. Voting procedures moved from voice voting at a few distant polling places on irregular occasions to written balloting in local polling places on an annual basis at fixed times and in approximately equal electoral districts. Mr. Dinkin's most extensive new material is on voter turnout. Here he adds substantially to what we know and inadvertently gives an ironic twist to the overall interpretation which ties his book together. His central thesis, stated in BOOK REVIEWS 331 the introductory overview and frequently reiterated, is that "the American election system underwent major changes during the Revolutionary era, advanc- ing rapidly in a modern, democratic direction." His evidence is largely consistent with this thesis: partisan electoral organization, new men, issue-oriented elections, formal nominations, and an expanded potential electorate, all of these became increasingly conspicuous between 1776 and 1790. However, his evidence on voter turnout in state after state throughout the late 1770s and 1780s indicates that at no time during the period did a simple majority of the adult white male population take advantage of this new opportunity to participate in the electoral process. In the early years (1776-1779) active participants constituted no more than 10 to 15 per cent of the potential electorate and in most states this did not much exceed thirty to forty percent by the end of the 17 80s. In this Pennsylvania stands out for its generally low turnout, exceeding 25 percent only once before the special election for delegates for the state constitutional convention in 1789. Historians of the American Revolution have been aware of low voter turnout in particular elections, in particular places, and at particular times. However, Dinkin's figures highlight the degree to which an overwhelm- ing majority of those qualified to vote did not participate in the electoral process anywhere, at any time, in any election. Furthermore, his figures show that participation was at its lowest level in those years in which historians have traditionally found the greatest public pressure to democratize the political process (1776-1779) and in that state which we have traditionally seen as leading the others in this direction: Pennsylvania. Mr. Dinkin has produced a good book, a useful book, and an interesting book. Its topic, its structure, and its organization will encourage few to read it cover to cover but it will be an invaluable tool for those in need of brief, authentic, and insightful descriptions of the principal characteristics of voting in the thirteen Revolutionary States of America between 1776 and 1790. SUNY College of Arts and Sciences, Brockport 0. S. IRELAND

Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty. Edited by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the United States Capitol Historical Society, 1981. Pp. xiv, 261. $20.00.) Traditionally, scholars have used a national focus in studying the formative years of 1775-1787 in United States history. Their assumption has been that the great men and events of that era interacted in the national arena. Recently, however, a number of historians have been investigating the states, local governments, and ordinary people of the Revolutionary period. They have found much of significance in the local and state arenas, as the eight essays in this volume, originally presented at a United States Capitol Historical Society conference on the "sovereign states," amply demonstrate. The net result has been that scholars, more than ever before, are gaining clearer perceptions of the Revolution's full character and meaning in all of its complexities. The collection opens with an overview article by Jackson Turner Main on the multiple contributions of the states to the Revolution and closes with the late Merrill Jensen's last published words in an essay summarizing the impact of regional rivalries on the making of the Constitution of 1787. Thus carefully framed, the six intervening studies look at aspects of political, economic, and 332 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY social conflict and change by case example. Hence we have Stephen E. Patterson on the roots of Massachusetts Federalism before 1787; Jerome J. Nadelhaft on patterns of democratization in Revolutionary South Carolina; Richard Alan Ryerson on political ideology, partisanship, and the Constitutionalist Party of Pennsylvania; Edward C. Papenfuse on Maryland's fiscal politics and factional rivalries; Edward Countryman on power relationships, or the lack thereof, in New York's Revolutionary Assembly; and Emory G. Evans on executive leadership in wartime Virginia. Taken as a group, the quality of these essays is exemplary, and together they display many of the methods that historians are now utilizing to get at the realities of state and local politics. In a collection so rich in content, diversity, and methodology, it is difficult in a prescribed space to emphasize all consequential findings. Some readers will be impressed with Evans's revisionist and positive assessment of Thomas Jefferson as a war governor; some will praise Countryman's presentation on the measurement of power politics in New York with its discovery of an unlikely central figure, Egbert Benson; and some will commend Ryerson's analysis of Pennsylvania's Constitutionalists as frustrated outsiders with a well-developed sense of mission and moral commitment (which serves to spur them forward with unremitting rigidity of purpose in writing and defending the state's first constitution). At the same time, not surprisingly, the eight essays will provoke debate. While Main argued vigorously for the states as a proper unit of analysis, Jensen placed his emphasis on regional diversities in assessing the accomplishments and shortcomings of the era. Did Main, in the end, overstate the case for the states? What is the proper blending of analytical units? Where does the potential researcher strike the balance? These essays raise many such questions, and they instruct in the processs. Scholars of early American history thus should read this volume. It represents a most thoughtful and useful contribution to the ongoing consideration of fundamental issues about the American Revolution.

University of Houston JAMES KIRBY MARTIN

George Lippard. By David S. Reynolds. Twayne's United States Authors Series. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982. Pp. 150. $15.95.) This is a short and interesting study of the short and interesting life and work of George Lippard, Philadelphia novelist, journalist, editor, and reformer. Lippard's lurid expose of Philadelphia, The Quaker City (1844), was the best-selling American novel until the appearance of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Little known until the past decade, but now undergoing something of a revival, Lippard was an American original. The readers of this study will want to sample some of the richness and complexity of Lippard's writings. After a short sketch of Lippard's life (1822-1854), most of it spent in and around Philadelphia on the fringes of journalism, Reynolds devotes most of his attention to the themes and style of Lippard's work. The masses loved his sensationalism, heavy with sex, violence, gore, and grisly sadism. In the line of Eugene Sue and the roman-feuilleton, Lippard was responsible for the city mysteries craze in the United States. With the eye of a police reporter for the penny press, he used real incidents as the basis of his fiction which attacked "civilized respectability and staid rationality." His irrational style "violated narrative linearity and chronological sequence." BOOK REVIEWS 333

Reynolds describes Lippard's innovative social and political views as "reac- tionary radicalism." Using "early Christianity, medieval ritualistic associations, and the American Revolution as models for the labor reform Lippard thought was needed to eliminate the cruel inequities and capitalist exploitation he saw everywhere in urban America," he attacked bankers, landlords, politicians, and the Protestant clergy, and presented sympathetic portraits of the poor, slaves, Indians, and women. Lippard opposed conventional Christianity and sought to replace it with a humanistic religion. In his historical fiction, Jesus the carpenter is a representative poor man. There was a practical side to these beliefs. In 1849 Lippard founded a labor organization, the Brotherhood of the Union, with ritual and regalia from the American Revolution-he was the Supreme Washington-which became the Brotherhood of America with over twenty thousand members in 1900, and which influenced the Knights of Labor. Readers of this journal will perhaps be most interested in Lippard's popular fiction of the American Revolution in Pennsylvania (including Blanche of Brandywine, The Rose of Wissahikon, Washington and His Generals, and Washington and His Men,) which created a number of patriotic myths, the best known being the ringing of the Liberty Bell on July 4, 1776, Washington being offered a dukedom by General Howe, and the dying Benedict Arnold donning his old Continental Army jacket in a final moment of resurgent patriotism. Lippard's serial novels had a great appeal for the lowbrows and reflected a "new phenomenon" in American publishing, the mass production of cheap paperbounds "designed for immediate consumption by an increasingly mobile readership." Reynolds concludes by evaluating Lippard's place in American literature: he "was an unusual combination of the popular writer and the exploratory genius, with one foot planted in ascendant mass culture, the other in the major literature of the American Renaissance, and with an eye peering into a future that would forget him all too soon." This judicious and well-written little study should help to remedy this neglect. This reviewer, at least, is intrigued enough to read The Quaker City.

Hobartand William Smith Colleges JAMES L. CROUTHAMEL

Tools & Trades of America's Past: The Mercer Collection. By Marilyn Arbor, with contributions by John W. Hulbert and James R. Blackaby. (Doylestown, Pennsylvania: Bucks County Historical Society, 1981. $6.95 paper.) Consistent visitor complaints about the lack of written information in the form of exhibit labels and interpretive literature for its Mercer collections led the Bucks County Historical Society to produce this book, with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Grundy Foundation, and private donors. Tools and Trades of America's Past, argues the society's executive director, "functions as both a guide to the Mercer collections and as a general source of information on tools and the people who used them." But despite this claim, this book makes neither good exhibit labels nor does it constitute useful literature on the tools and their users it seeks to interpret. As a source of information, it fails to point the reader to any books or articles on tools and trades. Most certainly the book does not do justice to these important collections and the man who brought them together. Henry Chapman Mercer wrote the first catalogue of his collections in 1897 334 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY on the occasion of their first exhibition at Bucks County Historical Society. Entitled Tools of the Nation Maker, the catalogue established a high standard for any such subsequent endeavors. Though demonstrating wrinkles of the antiquarian, Mercer raised many of the large, essential questions still addressed by those pursuing material culture study today. He wrote that the artifacts he had collected "offer valuable suggestions on all sides. Manifold elucidations of nationality are in store for us as we study them. Leading us by way of an untrodden path, deeper into the lives of the people, they give us a fresh grasp upon the vitality of the American beginning. At first, illustrating an humble story, they unfold by degrees a wider meaning, until at last the heart is touched." Through artifacts, Mercer sought to learn about the origin, diffusion, and evolution of tools in the Bucks County region. This was no exercise in provincialism but rather a sensitive study showing clear signs of the ethnogra- pher who had also pursued considerable scholarship in the historical literature. Tools of the Nation Maker offered a portent to Mercer's later works, The Bible In Iron (1914) and, most notably, Ancient Carpenters' Tools (1929). Regrettably, Tools and Trades of America's Past demonstrates none of the sensitivity and scholarship that marked Mercer's own work. One searches in vain for evidence that the authors ever consulted Mercer's writings, much less anyone else's; one hunts without success for an indication that they recognized the importance of the questions that emerged from Mercer's collecting and study of artifacts. The authors have sought to write interpretive thumbnail histories or essays about various areas of the Mercer collections (for example, basketmaking and broommaking) followed by brief exhibit labels of displayed objects which are keyed to crude line drawings of the particular exhibit areas. While sound in theory, this approach is most unsatisfactory in practice. Objects are often mislabeled or improperly described. For example, the reader will find the captions of the broomcorn machine and broommaking machine reversed on page eleven, but even after this error is detected, it is almost impossible to make sense of how these machines functioned. More seriously, there are few hints in this book that the Mercer-collected artifacts demonstrate ethnocultural diversity- something that Mercer found so important. In their efforts to achieve uniformity of interpretation, the authors have implicitly suggested that the American past, as represented by the Mercer collections, was also uniform. Not so. Interpreting the Mercer collections demands more careful attention than the Bucks County Historical Society has given it in this book. Only by first gaining an appreciation for why Mercer collected the artifacts in the first place and what he expected museum goers to derive from them can would-be successors truly realize the potential of these great collections and actualize them for the museum's visitors. Perhaps the task is too great for anyone but a Henry Chapman Mercer. Hagley Museum and University of Delaware DAVID A. HOUNSHELL

America's Valley Forges and Valley Furnaces. By J. Lawrence Pool. Edited by Angeline J. Pool. (West Cornwall, Connecticut: J. L. Pool, 1982. Pp. ix, 211. $15.00.) The author of this work, a retired surgeon, came across the ruins of a nineteenth-century blast furnace while trout fishing in western Connecticut. His BOOK REVIEWS 335 sense of history was piqued and he began investigations which not only revealed to him the history of that particular blast furnace, but also the history of American iron manufacture in general. The product of the author's researches is this armchair book which all but the most determined scholar will enjoy reading. It is clearly written in an engaging personal style, and contains numerous illustrations, maps, and tables to ponder. (Unfortunately, there is no table or list of this material.) I liked the maps of blast furnace sites in colonial and nineteenth-century Pennsylvania. Certainly this work has its limits. Although the author has done considerable study of the history of iron manufacture (the bibliography, though brief, is up-to-date), there are no footnotes and some assertions are too confidently made. For example, in discussing water power the author vastly oversimplifies by referring to the tub wheel as the ancestor of the modern hydraulic turbine, and he is wrong in asserting that turbines were rarely used to power blast machinery (P. 110). America's Valley Forges and Valley Furnaces certainly cannot be used as a reference work. Pennsylvania readers perhaps will be surprised that their state, though the major iron producer in America from late colonial times, looms less large when viewed from Connecticut. The Valley Forge along the Schuylkill River rates only a few words, though the title would indicate otherwise. Still, this book may be a useful antidote to iron industry histories which focus on the Keystone State.

Case Western Reserve University DARWIN H. STAPLETON

The Cormany Diaries: A Northern Family in the Civil War. Edited James C. Mohr. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982. Pp. xxvi, 597. $29.95.) Civil War diaries continue, after almost 120 years, to be published with regularity. This work, however, is sui generis. Not one, but two diaries are combined in alternating chapters that provide a significant account of the 1858-1865 Civil War era. The diarists, Rachel Bowman and Samuel Cormany, met at Otterbein College, Ohio, in 1858. Both were deeply religious, intelligent, and almost totally apolitical. They became engaged and he, with an inheritance, went to Missouri to begin their new home in 1860. After their marriage, they went to Canada to visit her relatives. The war intervened and they remained there until August, 1862, when they moved (with their first-born) to Chambers- burg, Pennsylvania, to be near Samuel's parents. He soon enlisted in the newly organized Sixteenth Cavalry Regiment as company clerk. Subsequently pro- moted to sergeant, second lieutenant of Company I, and first lieutentant and adjutant, he participated in every engagement (major and minor) from Chancel- lorsville to Gettysburg, the spring offensive of 1864, the "seige" of Petersburg, and the final campaign that led to Appomattox. Being on the "inside," administratively speaking, one is privy to the most personal information relative to the regiment's personnel and activities. While Samuel relates his war experiences at the company/regimental level (this is the only diary known to exist for the Sixteenth), Rachel, who is the superior writer, is bored and lonely with the excruciatingly hard life in Franklin County. Despite her intense religious beliefs, on April 25, 1864, she lamented: 336 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

"Just now I am tired of living" (p. 442). Yet she persevered. Her diary, alone, is worth the price of the book! In fact, any two of the following themes are similarly important: the "medical" practice of hydrography/phrenology (which both practised); education in rural Ohio; social life and customs in Ohio, Canada, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania; the role evangelical Protestantism in their lives; Union cavalry operations in Virginia and Pennsylvania, including picketing, raids, and day-to-day routine (including Samuel's own heroics-he was obliv- ious to danger); the role of the female in nineteenth-century America; their independent accounts of the Gettysburg campaign (Samuel sneaked away from his outfit to hurry into Chambersburg, on the heals of the retreating Confeder- ates, to inform the citizenry that Lee had lost); and Rachel's account of the burning of the town on July 30, 1864. Professor Mohr is to be commended for producing an outstanding contribu- tion to Civil War literature. The "Introduction," "Kinship Glossary," and "Abbreviations Used in Footnotes" are more than adequate. The latter two provide codes and space savers for the footnotes which are, fortunately, where they should be. Family papers and federal sources helped fill in the required explanatory data. There are thirty-one illustrations. Unfortunately, the editor erred in not including maps (at least four or five) for the general reader. The specialist will have to add this publication to his/her bibliography. In fact it is an excellent classroom source from junior high school through the college/university level. I am sure that the non-specialist will also find it to be a rare combination of scholarship and fascinating history. California University of Pennsylvania JOHN KENT FOLMAR

Workers' World: Kinship, Community, and Protest in an Industrial Society, 1900-1940. By John Bodnar. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Pp. xvi, 200. $19.50.) John Bodnar has done a great service in resurrecting and preserving the insights of industrial workers in Pennsylvania. Their descriptions of their lives are vivid and direct because through the techniques of oral history interviews their observations and world view are presented whole and in their own words. This direct communication results on occasion in expression which is poetic in quality. "I worked there three years. And then they called me in and asked me what I was going to do with my future and that kind of baloney. You get in that routine. You start working and you're in your thirties and your forties and after work each day you go to the pub and bum around there until seven o'clock. Before you know it, a lifetime went by. You have one of them wasted lifetimes, you might call it. You get in that rut and time went by" (p. 18). While this book is drawn largely from excerpts from oral interviews conducted under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the author has also provided in both the introduction and in the concluding chapter a central thesis of workers' culture: namely that workers in Pennsylvania were motivated primarily by a drive to preserve the integrity of BOOK REVIEWS 337 their families, communities, and worker-based enclaves and not by a drive for social change. Oral history is a relatively new technique in the modern historian's armamen- tarium and therefore its methodologies and hazards are not widely appreciated. Frequently given the complexities of the dynamic interaction between inter- viewer and interviewee, one tends to find what one seeks. Thus it can be hazardous to initiate a series of interviews with an explanatory hypothesis. Dr. Bodnar does not provide in this text the basic questionnaire used in this study which would enable the scholar interested in the dynamics of the oral history technique the opportunity to judge how open-ended and non-directive the questions were. However, he does state that the "emphasis was always on the familiar, communal and work arrangements of industrial workers." Thus he has found what he sought. Had he had a different organizing hypothesis, such as a drive for social change, he might have found that as well. Moreover, he does not inform the reader how the respondents were chosen, nor assure the reader that they are in any sense representative or normative. Therefore, his use of this data to challenge the concepts of workers' culture offered by other theoreticians such as Selig Perlman, David Montgomery, Herbert Gutman or Sidney Fine is less than convincing. The central thesis of the book provides the organization for the excerpts presented here. The first chapter details the importance of kinship in workers' lives. The second chapter deals with the workers' relationships within the social structure of the work environment. The final chapter is devoted to the importance of kinship and community to the organizational drives of the 1930s. This monograph provides us with moving and poignant narratives that detail the circumstances, casualties, and triumphs of the industrial worker. The fact that work was hard, that security was uncertain, and that kinship and community loyalties were important elements in the means to survive are abundantly illustrated in this important volume. Moreover, scholars interested in workers' culture will find this book an important resource in that it offers grist for an alternative explanation to those now available for the motivations of industrial workers. The Pennsylvania State University, ALICE M. HOFFMAN King of Prussia Center